Putin to blame for the 400 Russian reservist troops killed in Makiivka?

When Vladimir Putin called up 300,000 reservists in September to fill the casualty gaps on the battlefield in Ukraine, western commentators concluded they would be cannon-fodder for Kyiv's Nato-backed armed forces. So it has proved. If it is true that 400 of these newly-trained reservists have been killed by being caught all together in one building next to an ammunition dump in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, then it shows how little the Kremlin cares about the mobilised troops sent to keep Putin's war going. For Russian commanders to think it's sensible to put so many soldiers into one building and then to allow them all to use their cell phones, sending up a mass of "come-and-get-me" signals to Ukrainian gunners, beggars belief. Moscow insists "only" 63 Russian soldiers were killed in the huge HIMARS rocket attack on the building in the city of Makiivka. But all the reports from the Kyiv authorities and from angry Russian military bloggers indicate that the casualty toll was much higher. Indeed the building was demolished and there must be dozens of bodies buried under the rubble. My first reaction was, how scandalous that so many Russian troops were all gathered together under one roof without any protection, offering an easy target for the American-supplied HIMARS rockets. Yet another example of Russian command negligence. My second reaction was, how desperately tragic that these Russian soldiers, dragooned into fightng a war their leader, and only their leader, wanted to pursue, died becasue of the criminal neglect by their commanders. Perhaps the commanders died, too. War is always tragic and I feel nothing but sadness that 400 more lives may have been lost. Probably the majority of those who died were unremarkable Russians with families back home, not the rapists and looters and butchers we have read so much about in the last ten months. They were trained for war but may have died without firing a shot. It's a coup for the Ukrainian military, a victory of sorts and a massive blow to the Russians. But it is also another desperately sad example of the pointlessness of war.